My Health Record: How to opt out, pros and cons explained

With just days to go, every Australian will get a My Health Record on January 31 unless they opt out. Before making your decision, there’s 10 points to consider.

With just days to go, every Australian will get a My Health Record on January 31 unless they opt out.

The record will contain information on the medicines you are taking, your medical consultations, medical test results and reveal if you have had an abortion, a mental illness, a sexually transmitted disease or a drug addiction.

The record is likely to be useful for older Australians and those with chronic and complex health conditions and people taking multiple medications.

If these people end up in hospital in an emergency doctors can access their record and see what medications they are taking and whether they have any allergies.

My Health Record has been criticised for privacy concerns.

Tens of thousands of people have rushed to opt out of the record in the last two weeks.

If you are confused about whether you want, or need, a My Health Record, here are some things you need to know:

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MEDICAL HISTORY

1. Once your My Health record is activated a list of all the Medicare funded doctor’s visits, medical tests and subsidised medicines you’ve taken for the last two years will be added to the record. The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) warns this list “may indicate diagnosed conditions or illnesses or symptoms and tests”.

This will reveal if you have had mental illness, an abortion, a drug addiction etc. If you don’t want this to happen you must take action when activating the record to prevent this happening. If your doctor activates the record, this information will automatically load.

Australians will be added to My Health Record unless they opt out.

PRIVACY MEASURES

2. If you decide to get a My Health Record you should immediately set a PIN number to control who can see it. The default setting of the record is open access, this means any health professional from you podiatrist to your dietitian (up to 650,000 health professionals) will be able to see your medical history and medication list if they are registered to use the record unless you set an access code to restrict access. There are multiple ways you can control access to information in the record you need to read about this and decide what action to take.

Kerryn Phelps is against the My Health Record. Picture: Tim Hunter.

COURT ORDER

3. Law enforcement agencies will have to obtain a court order before they can access the information in your My Health Record under recent legislative changes. It is prohibited for insurers and employers to access or use My Health Record information, or to ask you to disclose the information, for insurance or employment purposes under any circumstance.

RESEARCH POTENTIAL

4. The government wants to share de-identified information from your My Health Record with third parties such as researchers. Tech experts from Melbourne University showed in 2016 how easy it was to re-identify Medicare data and they say it is almost impossible to fully de-identify health data. If you don’t want your health information shared you must tick a box when you activate your My Health Record.

SECURITY

5. The government says the My Health Record is subject to military grade security and has been “defence tested”. While the Australian Digital Health Agency may have military level security tech experts warn the security of the whole system is only as good as the weakest link which, in this case, is the security at your local GP practice or hospital. A corrupt medical practitioner or health employee could hack the system by pretending to be a legitimate user. Doctors and people fraudulently pretending to be a doctor can override any PIN number and security setting you set on the record to access your details in an emergency situation and could use this as a backdoor method of gaining your information. In 2017 Medicare card details were found for sale on the dark web, this happened because someone inside the system broke the law.

Screen grabs from the My Health Record government website. Picture: Supplied

TRACK VIEWS

6. There are fines of up to $315,000 and five years jail time for people who improperly use the record.

DATA THREAT

7. The government says there has never been a security breach of the record in six years. However, the agency which runs the record has revealed the system was subject to 42 data breaches in the year to June 2018. Seventeen people had another individual’s private medical details entered onto in their online My Health Record, a child had an incorrect parent or guardian assigned to their My Health Record, the records of two people were viewed by fraudsters and suspected fraudulent information was entered into the records of another 22 people. No financial penalties or jail terms were applied in these cases.

LONG LIFE

8. If you don’t opt out by January 31 a My Health Record will automatically be created for you. If you later decide to cancel the record the government says it will delete it. It is unclear whether the deletion will wipe away copies of the information in the record that have been downloaded by doctors, pharmacists or allied health practitioners.

Calanna Wholehealth Pharmacy manager Richard Thomas believes people will come around to the government's controversial online My Health Record despite security concerns.

SLOW UPDATES

9. You will have to ask your doctor to put up a shared health summary that lists your health conditions and the treatments you have received. Many doctors are not using the record, many hospitals don’t use it and test results may not appear on it for some time. Some patients who have a My Health Record complain it has not been updated in years. The government and doctors hope if the bulk of the population has one of these records it will become more useful.

MISINFORMED

10. If you get a My Health Record it is important to check the data downloaded on to it from Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Some people have found their record says they visited doctors they don’t know and are taking medicines for diseases they don’t have. This could be dangerous if doctors rely on the record in an emergency situation.

Originally published as My Health Record: How to opt out, pros and cons explained